Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1887-03-17
CHURCH AND STATE.

Aside from that moral turpitude with
which the Mormon religion has been
redolent from its corrupt inception,
which has characterized it through all
the dark years of its triumph, and is
still existent in these, the last days of its
baleful power, nothing has so cried
aloud to the American people for its
destruction as the union of Church and
State. The very phrase is retrogressive.
The union of Church and State" carries
the mind back at once over centuries
of progress and cycles of time until
the gloom of the dark ages is reached.
The union of Church and State means
the blotting out Of civilizations grandest
and deepest footsteps and the quenching
OF that world illuming and ever bright
ening lamp, fed by the rays from the
master minds Of added generations. 1t
means the revival of superstition, the
regn of ignorance, the lust of power, and
the domination of fraud 1t freezes the
heart, benumbs the intellect, fetters the
body, and destroys the sense of mans
responsibility to man. Beneath its touch
human nature is paralyzed and is revivi-
fed only to execute the commands of
cruel superstition, or obey the behests of
blind and arrogant fanaticisln. Intel
lect, that God-given attribute OF man,
long ago revolted against the iron and
unnatural bonds linking together in union
most accursed, Church and State. To
this union alone can be ascribed the fall
of the Roman Catholic Church from its
commanding attitude of place and power.
The Roman Pontiff once ruled Europe.
Kings and princes doffed the crown and
the jeweled circlet to the mitre. Empires
acknowledged the sway Of the Pope, and
the monk exercised dominion as universal
as it was potent. The spiritual and the
temporal power of the Roman Pontiff
were alike supreme. And yet from this
very supremacy Of power sprang the
Reformation. This great movement was
the involuntary breaking Of the chains
tered the human intellect. The mind of
man refused longer to be harrassed to
the car of superstition. The inevi-
table awakening, long and sorely
delayed, came at last. With the
first stirring of the intellectual giant
so long palsied, the breaking Of the fet-
ters began, and great was the rending
ther eof The fabric of the old Roman
Cath olic Church, built upon supersti
ton, rooted in fraud, butressed by
ignorance, and cemented with blood,
afforded no defense against the banner
of enlightment and the onslaught of
truth. 1t fell, and the dust of its own
ruins was all the pail the world
gave It, Contemptuously leaving the
dethroned monks to save what they
could from the wreck of the once mighty
fabric, the Reformation marched grandly
on to the quickstep of humanity, pro-
gress and civilization, and to-day is en-
balmed in history as the inception OF
all that is noble and good in Gods uni
verse. And Church and State is the in
stitution that has fourished for years in
all of the luxuriance of its evil strength |
in the 10th century, and within the limits |
of the United States who proudly boasts
that her people acknowledge no institu-
tions but those of freedom, and bend the |
knee to no rule but that of intellect.
Truly, it is passing of belief. Why! ia
long gone by English days that monster
of physical corruption and moral iniquity,
Henry the Eighth, freed the nation from
Popish rule, divorced by the strong hand
Church and State, and with the chaplet
he thus placed above the crown of the
Plantagenet and the Tudor, history covers
a multitude of sins. The righteous law
of the land has now interfered in Utah.
1t has said that Church and State shall
be separated, and this danger for our
Territory is practically gone by. This
result has been achieved by the almost
superhuman efforts of the intelligent,
gallant and loyal Gentiles of Utah.
This incubus is cast off, never more to
be resuTected, but as political anomaly
it has inscribed itself deep upon the
pages of the history of the nineteenth
century for future generations to read,
and men will marvel at the possibility
thereof.